- How to interview engineers
[BEHIND A PAYWALL]
Luca Rossi offers invaluable advice on hiring - How GenAI is reshaping tech hiring
[BEHIND A PAYWALL]
Gergely Orosz and Elin Nilsson provide a deep dive into the effects of Generative AI on hiring - Culture fit
Maria Campbell reflects on the term 'culture fit' and how being concrete about this can help with hiring - Here are reasons I didn't take job offers
Christian Heilmann offers his reflections on what made him turn down a range of jobs with useful insights for both employers and candidates on hiring/applying for jobs - Better technical assessments
A fireside chat with Laura Tacho about how and when to include Technical Assessments as part of the interview process. - When Is short tenure a red flag?
Jacob Kaplan-Moss offers great advice for hiring managers and candidates - Role title terminology
Jacob Kaplan-Moss provides definitions of some of the commonly used terms used when talking about job titles - Competing for talent as a startup
Laura Tacho shares advice on getting to know and communicate your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) to candidates - Dealing with misalignment while hiring
One of the most common mistakes I see when people are rushing to hire is mis-alignment on what they are looking for and how they will assess candidates. Jacob Kaplan-Moss gives some excellent advice on how to avoid this. - The secret to hiring engineers when you pay less than Google
Sarah Milstein gives some great advice on how to lean into your strengths when presenting yourself to candidates - Why you should include the salary in your job ads
Post The Pay's excellent Twitter thread outlining the problems which are caused by not including the salary in job ads. - How to write a great job post
[BEHIND A PAYWALL]
Luca Rossi provides invaluable advice on how to write a job post - On B players
Almad on the problems with, "We only/hire with A players" - RAP: Increase efficiency by reducing recruitment agency fees/commissions
Adam Martin walks you through why this is a recruitment anti-pattern - How to recruit
Rands recommends that for every open job on your team, you need to spend one hour a day on recruiting-related activities and that you cap that investment at 50% of your time. - Everyone thinks they’re hiring the top 1%
Joel Spolsky picks apart some of the many flaws in this thinking - Recruitment at Haplo
A description of how hiring and recruitment worked at Haplo which is full of great suggestions and advice including the Reverse Interview - Developing an employee proposition that attracts talent
Lauren Shufran offers guidance on how articulate the value that you are offering potential employees so that you can hire effectively. - The Hiring Book
Attracting good developers to your company is simple. Do the hard work of making your company a decent place to work and then tell people about it. Najaf Ali's book is full of good advice on how to do this.
Cvs (or resumes)
Guidance on writing CVs (or resumes)
- Why resume writing is snake oil
Aline Lerner provides a useful reminder that CV/resume filtering is crude and ugly and warns us to not put too much stock in the details of resume writing. - Your resume isn’t an advertisement
...but it should be. As Seppo Helava says this is, "A surprisingly straightforward guide to crafting an impactful, personal resume that will make readers desperate to hire you." - 6 tips for improving your CV
My tips for improving your CV - How to create a great resume
[BEHIND A PAYWALL]
Luca Rossi offers a comprehensive guide to writing a CV - How to write an effective developer resume: Advice from a hiring manager
Gergely Orosz offers great advice on writing a CV - A glimpse and a hook
Micheal Lopp shares how he reads CVs and offers tips on how to make yours stand out - Rands Leadership Slack
This is excellent community of engineering leaders and includes a #vet-my-resume channel where people offer feedback on one another’s CVs
Inclusivity
Advice on how to be more inclusive in your recruitment processes
- How can I tell if a company “cares” about DEI?
Aubrey Blanche provides some great questions to ask if you want to find out of the company you are applying to work for genuinely cares about DEI - Hiring (and retaining) a diverse engineering team
Gergely Orosz brings together really good advice from a 6 engineering leaders who have successfully hired and retained diverse teams. - Anonymous coding tests don’t remove bias
Laura Tacho dispels the myth and offers some recommendations for actually removing bias from your coding tests - “How do we hire more women?”
Emily Kager gives some great advice in answer to this much heard question - Your hiring process is probably biased
K. Tierney reminds you that, "Healthy hiring has a simple goal: to enable candidates to show you their best work, so that you can try to assess whether they’ll be able to perform the job responsibilities, and so that they can assess whether they’d like to work with you", and she also provides some great advice on how to achieve this. - Hiring is key to a successful business - so let's ditch outdated practices
Collaborative Future are helping companies update their hiring processes to bring them into the modern world and make them more inclusive. This article outlines some of the practices they have adopted - Gender Decoder: find subtle bias in job ads
Linguistic gender-coding shows up in job adverts as well, and research has shown that it puts women off applying for jobs that are advertised with masculine-coded language. This site is a quick way to check whether a job advert has the kind of subtle linguistic gender-coding that has this discouraging effect.
Interviews
Tips for interviewing candidates and being interviewed
- Career history interviews
[BEHIND A PAYWALL]
Jean Hsu describes how to run Career History Interviews and what you can get out of them - On hiring
Robbie Clutton's advice for creating scalable, consistency and noise-free interview evaluations. - Tell me about a time documents
Sally Lait's advice on preparing stories to tell in interviews is excellent. I wish that I had done this before my last set of interviews. - Getting a job as an engineering executive
Will Lethain's guide to getting an exec role is jammed packed with excellent advice - 5 mistakes to avoid when interviewing
Laura Tacho offers invaluable tips on being interviewed - How can you tell if the company you’re interviewing with is rotten on the inside?
Charity Majors gives some great advice for interviewees. Essential reading for interviewers too. - How to ace the Behavioural Interview
Spot on advice from Sandra Spanik to help you prepare for your interview - How we interview software engineers at LloydsDirect
This post helps candidates know what to expect and helps them prepare for their interviews. How do you help your candidates prepare? - Getting interview questions in advance
Terence Eden shares his reflections on the benefits of sharing interview questions with candidates in advance - Unpacking interview questions
Jacob Kaplan-Moss analyses a number of interview questions that he uses. Reading this will help you think about what you are looking when you ask your questions and/or what an interviewer might be looking for when ythey ask you questions.
Recruiters
Recommended recruiters that I or someone I know has had a very good experience of working with
- Adrienne Howlett
Adrienne (Adi) helps you scale your product team - Thayer Prime
Thayer builds the human side of digital technology, with a particular focus on inclusion of all people, and is highly recommended to help you build your team. - Warren Beazley
Warren helps recruit CTOs and Senior Tech Leaders
Redundancies (or layoffs)
Guidance on making redundancies (or layoffs) if they are required
- Layoff lessons: Four things I wish I knew
Molly Graham's advice on how to handle layoffs is essential reading - 3 part guide to lay offs
Johanna Rothman offers clear guidance on making lay offs - Preparing for layoffs in tech
Gergely Orosz provides an excellent guide to both making decisions about making layoffs and also how to implement them should they be necessary
Where to find candidates and roles
Places where you can find candidates if you are hiring and roles if you are searching
- Digital apprenticeships listings
Kay Lack's Tech Job #1 board includes this searchable list of digital apprentiships that are available in England